The Lattice Maker plugin created by TIG on SketchUcation.com is a simple plugin allowing you to make lattice style arrays and frames. The plugin works great to create skylights, sculptures, mosaic glass tiles, greenhouses and much more. This plugin is great for architects and contractors to create works simply and quickly.

The plugin allows you to create the frames and inset panes for any surface. It works great to create just about any shape you desire. When using the plugin you need to select the faces and then go to the plugin menu and click the “Lattice Maker” plugin. A dialogue will appear with options for the width and depth of the frame, the pane inset dimension, the lattice or frame material and the pane material.

The drawback of this plugin is that there are only a limited amount of colors to choose from for the lattice and same with the pane. Though having the glass option is great, but the plugin does not allow you to specify the thickness of the glass. And a great benefit for this plugin would be to have an icon or button to save some time, though you always do have the option of creating a shortcut key for it.

Overall, the Lattice Maker plugin created by TIG is a very useful plugin to have. At the time of this review this plugin is free and is available at SketchUcation.com. I give this plugin 4.5 out 5 stars.

Download Notes: Make sure to be logged in on SketchUcation.com

The Model Location plugin created by Jim on the Sketchup [Plugins] Blog is a simple plugin to specify the location of your model. It seems to work well, though we do not have the tools to test it’s accuracy. The plugin does not really come with any explanation and can be a little frustrating to figure out.

The menu comes with 8 fields/options. The first two are for your informational purposes, they don’t really affect anything much. Then you need to input your latitude and longitude which can be found fairly easily online (we used itouchmap.com to find the values). Then you need to input the time zone, this was a little tricky as the plugin does not really explain this. But basically you count using a general timezone map from the “international date line”, to the right you go in the negative direction and left positive. We could be wrong on this but this is how we think it works. The daylight savings option specifies if your region abides by daylight savings standards (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time)*. And then you can specify the North location with an angle and choose to display it or not. It displays as an orange line on your SketchUp window. We are not sure if these directions are 100% correct but we believe it is, please comment if you observe that this plugin works otherwise.

It is suggested to set this up once and then create it as a template so these options are saved on all future drawings. And note that two plugins are needed for it to work, the model_location.rb and inputbox.rb.

Overall, The Model Location plugin created by Jim is a useful plugin, granted if it works correctly. At the time of this review this plugin is free and is available at the Sketchup [Plugins] Blog. I give this plugin 3.5 out 5 stars.

The Sun Position plugin created by Cerebral Meltdown is a fun and useful sun path tracking plugin that shows you precisely where the sun is at a certain time period of the year and location. This plugin is great for designing buildings and actually seeing where the sun would be at certain periods of the year and during the day. It could help to achieve the highest home efficiency and Leed points (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) when designing buildings. But the developer does mention to check the accuracy if exact position is crucial.

The sun position plugin is very easy to use and also shows you where North would be and you can adjust the sun spheres to however you would like. But a drawback is that this plugin does not produce the sunlight from the sun models. So you would still have to set your own sun light locations, but it would be pretty simple as you already would know where to place it based from this plugin. I recommend placing the suns on their own layer.

Overall, the Sun Position plugin by Cerebral Meltdown is a great plugin to have if you are dealing with structures. This type of information can be crucial to designs and this why this is a must have for architects and civil designers. At the time of this review this plugin is free and is available at CerebralMeltdown.com. I give this plugin 5 out 5 stars!